small scale VMware vSphere setups for 2-3 servers?

What does an outline of common VMware vSphere deployments with software and licenses look like for small businesses? Small business environments around 2-3 Servers and also outlining VMs they run. I can't picture it well. Here was the only really quick note i found on planning a deployment: https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/2ydaiy/best_hardware_for_a_vsphere_essentials_plus_w/

While VMware vSphere essentials has a nice price (only $560 w/1y Retail) but it has only vCenter and none of the typical features most wanted including vMotion and HA. Does anyone actually run that in the real world? vSphere essentials plus is $5500 w/1y retail (3 servers with 2 CPUs each).


Essentials Plus adds: vSphere Hypervisor, vMotion, High Availability, Data Protection, vShield Endpoint, vSphere Replication https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/compare

vSphere is licensed by CPU. So... how many CPUs total?
5 servers with dual CPUs each would essentially cost the same in vSphere licensing as 10 servers with a single CPU each.

We deployed a small (3-host) environment, and licensing cost us $24k for licensing 6 CPUs with Enterprise Plus
vCenter was another $6k.

Essentials Plus is what we sold the most of in 2-3 host deployments for SMB. HA was key and the rest of the features were an added bonus...

Thanks j-sat, wow that is a lot of licensing but guessing you have something rather mission critical.

What were the key features you needed from vSphere Enterprise Plus? Could you sketch out a broad picture of your setup? how many VMs and in general their types?

Vader said:

Essentials Plus is what we sold the most of in 2-3 host deployments for SMB. HA was key and the rest of the features were an added bonus...

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Thanks Vader. Yeah VMware quotes a typical sub 1 minute down time with HA recovery. What has your experience been? DPM sounds great for saving power in the evening or weekends.

What do your deployments look like? 3 Identical servers with dual cpu, 64GB RAM, running windows servers DC,DNS,File,SQL,Exchange with local storage?

smangular said:

Thanks j-sat, wow that is a lot of licensing but guessing you have something rather mission critical.

What were the key features you needed from vSphere Enterprise Plus? Could you sketch out a broad picture of your setup? how many VMs and in general their types?

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it's for a (relatively) small health facility.
It was built to replace the existing 20+ server for their EMR/EHR system, along with migrating their other non-EMR/EHR applications to the virtual environment.

I believe we have just standardized on Enterprise Plus, so that's what they got. At one time we were using dvSwitches, though I don't believe we are anymore. Or, at least not to the same level.
We are not using them at this site, anyway.

Though we are also trying to standardize vSphere builds with host profiles.

I've just about completed virtualizing all their systems and have migrated their file shares to a NetApp vFiler.

We currently have 42 VMs running. We have a Domain Controller, DHCP server, the EMR/EHR system (which alone takes up 23 VMs), then the other apps they use.

What do your deployments look like? 3 Identical servers with dual cpu, 64GB RAM, running windows servers DC,DNS,File,SQL,Exchange with local storage?

Click to expand...

We did a ton of what we call the 3-2-1 solution,especially from Dell, 3 Rackmount servers usually R6XX, 2 x Dell Switches and an EqualLogic with VMware Essentials Plus.